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V 



POLITICAL CONDITION OF THE SOUTH. 



SPEECH 



OF 



1/ 



HON. GEORGE F. HOAR, 



OF MASSACHUSETTS, 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 



AUGUST 9, 3 876. 




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Missis- 

WASHINGTON. J*f* ^nd 

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SPEECH 



HON. GEORGE F. HOAR 



The House having under consideration the political condition of the South — 

Mr. HOAR said : 

Mr. Speaker: I was desirous the other day, "when the gentleman 
from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar J concluded his interesting remarks, to 
make some observations which were suggested by his speech. I have 
in vain sought an opportunity until the present time. I listened to 
the speech of the gentleman with mingled feelings of pleasure and 
regret. I always hear him with gratification whenever he chooses to 
address the House on important public questions. His speech the 
other day was a masterpiece of intellectual power and skill. I can- 
not conceive that the opinions he advanced could have been defended 
with more power of argument or commended with more adroit and 
persuasive appeal to those of his countrymen who differ from him. I 
certainly am not one of those, if any thei - e are, who would impute to 
the gentleman from Mississippi any want of sincerity in the opinions 
he has advanced in this debate, or in the positions he has heretofore 
taken which have attracted the attention of the country. I shared 
with the people of my own State in the pleasure created by his manly 
and eloquent tribute to the memory of our beloved Senator. I do not 
arrogate to myself the right to go behind the public utterances of 
gentlemen in debate here and impute to them motives which they 
themselves disclaim. If I did, I freely say that I deem it incredible 
that a man should know how to touch the noblest chords of manly 
sympathy in the hearts of his countrymen unless such sympathies 
were congenial to his own breast. I was therefore especially sorry 
that in sounding for his party the key-note of the coming presidential 
campaign the gentleman seems to have wholly abandoned the senti- 
ments toward the majority of his countrymen and the Government 
of his country which actuated him on the occasion to which I have 
referred. 

His last speech, however philosophic its guise or however appar- 
ently calm or impartial, was in full accord with the uniform tone of 
the democratic press, northern and southern. It was in full accord 
with the uniform current of speech which has prevailed among his 
associates in this Hall whenever questions relating to the condition 
of the South have arisen, beginning with the suppressed utterances of 
the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Hill] in the early part of the ses- 
sion, who threatened us with a new war in which he and his friends 
were to defend the Constitution against republican invasion, contin- 
uing with the speech of the gentleman's own colleague from Missis- 
sippi, who told us we had broken every oath we ever took, down to 
the time when the gentleman from New York made his grim and 
ghastly jests over the Hamburgh massacre, and when the eloquent 
gentleman from Virginia, "out of the abundance of the heart the month 



speaking," denounced "the tyrannical Government" of his country. 
Was it in mockery or in self-delusion that after the arraignment of a 
majority of his countrymen made by the eloquent gentleman from 
Mississippi, he ended by commending to us the sentiment of the poet — 
Thy gentleness hath made thee great. 
The gentleman's speech was a bitter invective against the Govern- 
ment, of whose magnanimity in restoring him to his political rights 
after an attempt to destroy it he confessed himself the other day 
a conspicuous instance. The murders and outrages committed upon 
weak, unoffending, defenseless American citizens are to him but the 
attempt of a down-trodden people to turn itself in its agony under 
the heel of an oppressor. The attempt of the Government of the 
United States to exercise its constitutional authority to preserve to 
the majority in any southern State the right of free and fair elec- 
tions are to him but the exertion of a hostile and alien power to keep 
down in the dust what he terms " his people," by which term I sup- 
pose he means the white democrats of the South. The amendments 
of the Constitution by which four millions of the laboring classes of 
the South, whose fathers had dwelt for generations upon its soil, to 
whose unpaid toil its greatness, its wealth, its prosperity are largely 
owing, to whose Christian forbearance the safety of the homes of the 
wives, of the children, of the South was due while the whites were 
away during four years of war waged for their oppression — a body 
of people speaking the same language, of the same religion, bouud 
to them by ties so close that he says "every black man and black 
woman and black child in the South was bound by the most tender 
affection to some white man or white woman or white child" — the 
amendments, I say, by which these persons were enfranchised he 
speaks of as " crushed in " upon the institutions of the South. He 
compares this enfranchisement to the sudden pouring in upon the 
people of New England and New York of 4,000,000 of Chinese coolies. 
The policy by which 4,000,000 negroes received their place as equals 
among 15,000,000 suggests to him Gihbon's famous sentence that the 
most hateful despotism in the world is the rule of a people by its 
own slaves. Truly — 

Thy gentleness hath made thee great. 

I trust the people of the North will read the speech of the gentle- 
man from Mississippi. They will judge of the expediency of com- 
mitting the destinies of the colored people to a party of whose senti- 
ment those to which I am replying are by the common judgment of 
its members the mildest type. 

Mr. SINGLETON. Will the gentleman allow me a moment ? 

Mr. HOAR. Certainly. 

Mr. SINGLETON. While the gentleman is upon this subject and 
declaiming so eloquently in behalf of the colored people of Missis- 
sippi, depicting their condition 

Mr. HOAR. The gentleman, I suppose, does not interrupt me for 
an argument. 

Mr. SINGLETON. I hope the gentleman will allow me a moment, 
I have always been courteous to my associates on this floor. 

Mr. HOAR. Certainly. 

Mr. SINGLETON. I want to have read a telegram which I received 
this morning from some colored citizens of the State of Mississippi. 

Mr. HOAR. I object. I do not think, Mr. Speaker, that any cour- 
tesy of debate requires a gentleman to yield to another to make an 
argument or to put in what he regards as facts on the other side. If 
I have misrepresented the gentleman personally, or misrepresented 



any fact in regard to his State, I am perfectly willing to Yield for a 
correction. 

Mr. SINGLETON. Will the gentleman allow me to state the pur- 
port of this telegram 1 

Mr. HOAR. If it pertains to what I was stating. 

Mr. SINGLETON. I wish to set the facts in a proper light before 
the country. This telegram I have received this morning. 

Mr. HOAR. I will not have any doubts about the question of 
courtesy ; I yield for the reading of the telegram. 

Several Members. Send it up to the desk to be read. 

Mr. HOAR, No ; read it yourself . 

Mr. CONGER. They will not extend vour time, and why do you 
let it be read ? J 

Mr. HOAR. O, they will not refuse that, I am sure. 

Mr. SINGLETON. I wish to state before the dispatch is read This 
one fact : The parties who have sent that telegram, one of theni was 
a republican clerk of the county court of Yazoo County last year 
but is now acting with the democratic party. The other one was a 
slave belonging to my wife's father's estate, to whom, in conjunction 
with five others, I sold a plantation for $13,500, every dollar of which 
has been paid, and he is now living on the place with others. The 
dispatch will explain itself. I want, while you are making such a 
clamor over the troubles of the colored people in Mississippi, that you 
hear what they say for themselves. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

„ -. -r, „ Yazoo City, Mississippi, August 8, 1876. 

Hon. O. K. Sixgletox : 

Big barbecue on hand for 15th August. Tour presence is indispensable and we 
urge you to come. Answer. 

TV. H. FOOTE, 
LEWIS HOT. 

Committee. 

Mr. SINGLETON. I want to say in addition that these gentlemen 
are both colored and supporters of the democratic party. They were 
once republican. Now you see where they stand. It is an invita- 
tion to a barbecue, gotten up in part or in whole by colored people. 

Mr. HOAR. I wish the gentleman would come up sometime in the 
course of the summer to a clam-bake on Cape Cod, and I will extend 
him an invitation now for that purpose. [Laughter.] 

Mr. LYNCH. I wish to state that I know Mr. Foote personally, 
having served in the Legislature with him for several years. I know 
him to be a good republican when he is at liberty to be that. He 
lives in the county of Yazoo, (in Yazoo City,) a county that was car- 
ried last year for my honorable colleague by a system of organized 
terrorism and violence. Otherwise, that gentleman, instead of in- 
viting my colleague to speak, would invite whoever may be nomi- 
nated against him to speak. 

Mr. SINGLETON. One word in response. [Laughter.] 

Mr. HOAR. Will the gentlemen on the other side extend my time ? 
[Cries of "Yes."] J 

Mr. SINGLETON. I do not think there will be any objection to 
the extension of the gentleman's time. I regret the gentleman from 
Maine was not equally as courteous as the gentleman from Massa- 
chusetts when I asked him to yield to me yesterday. 

Mr. HALE. I knew my time was running out and declined to 
yield to other gentlemen besides the gentleman from Mississippi. 

Mr. SINGLETON. But we will not discuss that In the county 
of Yazoo the registered vote was about 3,500, perhaps 3,600, and I 
received of that number about 3,347 votes. You may intimidate men 



(5 

and keep them from the polls, but you caunot drive them to the polls 
aud force them to vote the ticket you wish. 

Mr. HOAR. I do uot know about that. 

Mr. SINGLETON. There was no intimidation at said election on 
election-day. I have in my possession now a circular printed aud 
published by Mr. Foote, and a number of others, declining to be can- 
didates at all, because tbey did not wish or intend to run on the 
republican ticket, having abandoned the party, as they said. I have 
said circular iu my possession, and will produce it before the House 
if necessary. 

Mr. HOAR. I make no question of the individual character or 
kindness of heart of the gentleman from Mississippi. On the con- 
trary, I am happy to state publicly that some soldiers in my district 
heard with pleasure that he had taken a seat in the Congress of the 
United States because of his chivalrous kindness to them when they 
were prisoners and under his charge. But in the State of Mississippi 
at the last election, the democratic chairman of the State committee 
telegraphed to one of his associates to take care that the chairman of 
the republican State committee was not murdered, saying that they 
had nearly got through their election and all was going well and they 
did not want to give any handle to anybody ; and his correspondent 
replies by telegraphing — I have forgotten the name of the man now — 
but the democratic correspondent telegraphed back that the republi- 
can was all safe and that he owed the safety of his life to that dis- 
patch. 

Mr SINGLETON. That happened in my own county. I chance 
to know the gentleman, General Warner. He came to the couuty of 
Madison, at one of the little out-of-the-way voting-precincts, on the 
day of election, and I do not suppose there was any man there who 
was not in as much danger of being injured as General Warner. His 
presence was not considered of so much importance as to put his life 
in jeopardy. 

Mr. HOAR. The person to whom the chairman of the democratic 
central committee telegraphed did not so consider it. He said he 
owed the safety of his life to the safe-conduct sent by telegraph. 
"Your dispatch saved Warner," was his reply. 

I intended to deal with the subject a little later on. The argu- 
ment of the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] was in sub- 
stance this: He said there existed throughout the civil service of the 
country great corruption, and on the part of the majority of the 
American people great dissatisfaction ; that there stood between the 
remedy for that maladministration and the people an organization 
called party, the republican party. He quoted certain authorities to 
show that such an organization having iu its control some hundred 
thousand of office-holders could permanently deprive forty millions of 
the American people of the right of self-government and prevent them 
from executing any reform. He said that the objection to overthrow 
that party and remove them from power cousisted in the fear that 
it was not safe to trust the liberties of the newly enfranchised col- 
ored men at the South, and the gains crystallized into the amend- 
ments of the Constitution, to the democratic party of the former 
slave States. He half conceded and half denied that there had been 
any outrages or murders on the part of the democratic party of the 
Southern States. But if there had been, he said, everything that 
had happened was justified by the misgovernmeut under which those 
States labored and by the unwarrantable Federal interference with 
their right of local self-government. That is the substance of his 
argument, aud it is that argument to which I propose to reply. 



The gentleman, however, not very consistently with his claim that 
this strong, vigorous, wealthy, defiant American people could not de- 
fend itself against a hundred thousand postmasters and custom-house 
officers, went on to scout the idea that the armed democratic organi- 
zations of the Southern States, drilled and compacted, numbering 
millions, wielding the State power of those States, could ever he a 
menace or danger to the liberties of the same American people. On 
the other hand, his argument was that the hundred thousand un- 
armed people, the insignificant postmasters and custom-house officers 
and revenue officers of this country, constituted a danger to our liber- 
ties which, when they reached the number of a hundred thousand, it 
was impossible for the American people to overcome ; while at the 
same time the armed, desperate, unscrupulous millions taking posses- 
sion of and wielding lawlessly the powers of from eleven to fifteen 
States, and allied with their political associates at the North, consti- 
tute no danger which any wise statesman could for a moment regard. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, I propose to address myself to these propositions 
in their order ; in the first place, to the claim that there is a preva- 
lent corruption or maladministration of political affairs in this coun- 
try which should alarm or excite the fears of the American people for 
the purity of their Government or the perpetuation of their liberties. 
I do not think any man will accuse me of refraining anywhere from 
fully asserting, emphasizing, and condemning any act of misgovern- 
ment or corruption because that act proceeded from a republican 
quarter. I agree that the republican party has in some important 
cases misplaced its confidence and that there has been in some high 
quarters error of judgment in selecting and failure of vigor in detect- 
ing and removing unworthy officers ; but having investigated this 
question with some care, I declare my belief that the sixteen years in 
which the republican party have held the power in this Government 
have been purer and freer from corruption or maladministration of 
any sort than the sixteen years which followed the inauguration of 
General Washington. I believe that is true not only proportionately, 
but absolutely. We have forty millions of population, and they had 
but five or six. We have nearly a hundred thousand office-holders 
and raise a revenue of three hundred millions a year, and they had 
but a few thousand office-holders and raised a revenue of but a few 
millions. But I believe there is absolutely less of corruption and less 
of maladministration and less of vice and evil in public life than there 
was in the sixteen years which covered the administration of Wash- 
ington, the administration of John Adams, and the first term of Jef- 
ferson. I agree with the gentleman from Mississippi himself when 
he says : 

"We must believe that the moral character of our people is sound, that they enter 
upon the second century of their nationality with increased moral earnestness, with 
higher standards of public virtue and official rectitude. 

I believe, with that accomplished orator and scholar Dr. Storrs, 
that— 

There never has been a time, not here alone hut in any country, when the fierce 
light of incessant inquiry blazing on men in public life would not have revealed 
forces of evil like those we have seen, or when the condemnation which followed 
the discovery would have been sharper. 

The republican party, as I have said, has controlled the Govern- 
ment for sixteen years, a term equal to that which covers the whole 
administration of Washington, the whple administration of John 
Adams, and the first term of Jefferson. It has been one of those 
periods in which all experience teaches us to expect an unusual mani- 
festation of public corruption, of public disorder, and of evils and 



errors of administration. A great war ; the time which follows a great 
war, great public debts, currency and values inflated ; the exertion 
of new and extraordinary powers for the safety of the state ; the sud- 
den call of millions of slaves to a share in the Government — any one 
of these things would be expected to create great disturbance, and 
give rise to great temptations and great corruptions. Our term of 
office has seen them all combined. And yet I do not scruple to affirm 
that not only has there been less dishonesty and less maladministra- 
tion in the sixteen years of republican rule proportion all y to the num- 
bers and wealth of the people than in the first sixteen years after 
the inauguration of Washington, but there has been less absolutely 
of those things. 

Why, Mr. Speaker, one of the most famous generals of the revo- 
lutionary war, whose life extended down to the period to which I 
have alluded, while he was Quartermaster-General, was in partner- 
ship with a firm for the purpose of selling quartermaster's stores to 
the Government and making a profit, corresponding with bis partner 
secretly and in cipher. The Attorney-General and Secretary of 
State, Washington's friend, while he was Secretary of State was de- 
tected in receiving money from France as a bribe to thwart the for- 
eign policy of tbe administration of which he was a member. An- 
other Cabinet officer of Washington, Hamilton, being charged with 
a corrupt official relation with a citizen, defended himself by ac- 
knowledging to his countrymen, over his own signature, a profligate 
relation to the wife of the person named. Still another Cabinet offi- 
cer of Washington wrote a letter, which is in existence in my own 
State, in which he admitted to his correspondent, and begged his 
correspondent to help him to conceal from the public view, an act 
of personal dishonor compared to which the crime charged upon Bel- 
knap is as the act of an archangel. Why, sir, at the beginning of 
the last four years of the period of which I speak who were the can- 
didates whom the great American people brought forward for their 
first office? Who received an equal number of democratic votes with 
Jefferson in the electoral college ? Who was supported by the feder- 
alists in the House against Jefferson through thirty-seven ballotings? 
Aaron Burr, the man who, by an act half duel and half murder, de- 
prived his countrymen of the precious and costly life of Hamilton ; 
Aaron Burr, who a few years after, the great office of Vice-Presi- 
dent scarcely laid down, organized a treasonable and corrupt intrigue 
against the Government of his country and against neighboring ter- 
ritory, the punishment of which he escaped by an acquittal by a jury 
on technical grounds, Chief Justice Marshall presiding in court. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, these things were not known. Washington con- 
cealed the act of his Secretary of State from his countrymen and ac- 
cepted his resignation. The difference between the two generations 
is the Drummoud light which the press turns upon all these transac- 
tions and under which the moral sense of the country indignantly 
demands their exposure and punishment. I wonder if the gentleman 
from Mississippi or any of his associates on the other side of the House 
have heard of the Yazoo claim. In the year 1795 the State of Georgia 
owned the lands now constituting the greater portion of the State of 
Mississippi on the eastern bank of the Mississippi, then called the 
Mississippi country. An association was got up to buy those lands 
at an inadequate and fraudulent price from tbe Legislature of the 
State of Georgia. They had been offered some $800,000 or a million 
dollars : but they passed an act selling them to this association for 
$500,000. There was a great public excitement on the subject, and 
the next year the Legislature of Georgia ordered an investigation. 



9 

They found that of the majority of the house of representatives of 

the 'State of Georgia every man had received a bribe in money or 
lands, and that the same was true of a large number in the senate, 
who had passed the bill by a majority of one. The next year they 
passed a statute, winch I have before me, in which they recited the 
facts I have stated and proceeded to enact that the public records of 
the State of Georgia concerning this transaction should be taken into 
the court and burned in the presence of the Legislature. They pro- 
vided also that wherever a deed was recorded under that statute in 
any county of the State the record should be taken to the county 
court and there burned; "to the end," as the law goes on to say, 
"that no trace of so unconstitutional, vile, aud fraudulent transaction 
should appear except the infamy attached to it by the repealing stat- 
ute." 

Now the State of Georgia subsequently ceded this tract of land back 
to the United States, and claimants under the fraudulent sales came 
to Congress under the administration of Mr. Jefferson and a lobby 
was formed, of which the Postmaster-General of the United States 
under Mr. Jefferson was at the head, and they attempted to get a con- 
firmation of the fraudulent grant through Congress. It is said — 
whether it be true or not 1 do not know — that seventy members of 
the two branches of Congress had been corruptly induced to promise 
their consent to the passage of that bill. That fact, however, does 
not rest on any proof. You will remember also, Mr. Speaker, that in 
the time of John Adams he sent to the Senate a nomination for a high 
military office of an unworthy son-in-law of his own who had been 
detected in some breach of trust; the nomination of a man so un- 
worthy that his own Secretary of War lobbied at the doors of the 
Senate Chamber to prevent his confirmation. 

Now we hear from that class of persons called " independents'" 
expressions of discontent. We hear it from the universities and from 
the scholars of the country. I rejoice that they are alert in regard 
to the evils of political administration ; but, sir, the condemnation 
which came in former times from the same class could hardly be ut- 
tered upon this floor by any gentleman who desires to preserve his 
character for candor or moderation. I have in my possession (I wish 
I had it here) a copy of a poem delivered in 180:5 by Mr. Brackett be- 
fore the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Dartmouth and published by a 
committee of which Ezekiel Webster, afterward one of the most cel- 
ebrated men in the State of New Hampshire, was chairman. Mr. 
Brackett in that poem, amid the applause of the scholars gathered 
at the festival of that famous and learned university, draws a picture 
of the degradation of his country in the fifteenth year of its con- 
stitutional existence in vigorous strains worthy of Pope. He sup- 
poses the mighty shade of Washington to rise on the banks of the 
Potomac — 

His warm cheek glowed, aud flashed his angry eyes ;, 
Then from his brow the laurel-wreath uuhoimd, 
And threw the withering honors on the ground. 

This is his portraiture of Jefferson, then President : 
Cimmerian goblins brooded o'er the hour 
"When here a wild projector rose to power ; 
Delusive schemes distend whose plodding brain, 
Whose philosophic robe debaucheries stain. 
He, weak in rule, unskilled in moral lore, 
In practice infidel, in spirit poor ; 
Despised in person, and debased iu mind, 
At once the curse and pity of mankind, 
Pleased with his simple garb and sable whore, 
Reviles the God his countrymen adore. 



10 

Refined in insult ! There we saw him shed 
Theatric sorrow o'er the mighty dead ! 
Oh, then, then Heaven's indignant thunders slept ; 
The shade was wounded, and the virtues wept ! 

Here is the picture of Albert Gallatin, that accomplished scholar 
and statesman, like Agassiz, one of the two great and costly gifts our 
Bister-republic of Switzerland has given to America, as he seemed to 
contemporary eyes. Gallatin was then at the head of the Treasury. 

Columbians ! see, disgraced and drooping, stand 
Tour eagle, half unfledged by party's hand ! 
Columbians ! see a foreign child of vice. 
Vile leech of state, whose virtue 's avarice, 
Sedition nursed and taught in faction's school, 
With front of triple brass, your treasure rule ! 
Columbians! see the foes of virtue rise, 
By slander mounted, and upheld by lies ! 
Columbians ! see your veterans basely spurned, 
Tour heroes slighted, and your chiefs unmourned ! 
See ! nor while merit from your board is driven, 
Expect the favor of offended heaven. 
The society of the Phi Beta Kappa return to the author their cordial thanks 
for his ingenious and sentimental poem and request a copy for publication. 

This was the sentiment of Dartmouth in the fifteenth year of the 
Eepuhlic. It was not much different at Harvard. 

I desire to read to the House some extracts from the writings of 
Fisher Ames, who retired from Congress during the administration of 
General Washington, and who represented the city of Boston, to show 
what he thought of the condition of the country at that time. He 
■was chosen president of Harvard about the time these letters were 
written. I shall read only a few passages taken almost at random 
from his letters : 

Our country is too big for union, too sordid for patriotism, too democratic for 
liberty. What is to become of it, He who made it best knows. Its vice will govern 
it by practicing upon its folly. This is ordained for democracies. 

Then he goes on to say — 

Property at public disposal is sure to corrupt. Here, to make the result equally 
inevitable and inveterate, power is also to be for some ages within the arbitrium 
of a house of representatives. Before that period Botany Bay will be a bettering- 
house for our public men. Our morals, forever sunning and fly-blown like fresh 
meat hungup in the election market, will taint the air like pestilence. Liberty, if 
she is not a goddess that delights in carnage, will choke in such an atmosphere, fouler 
than the vapor of death in a mine. 

Again he says : 

Suppose an attack ou property, I calculate on the "sensibilities'' of our nation. 
There is our sensoi iuni. Like a' negro's shins, there our patriotism would feel the 
kicks and twinge with agonies that we should not be able so much as to conceive 
of, if we only havebur faces spit in. In this ease we could wipe off the ignominy, 
and think no more of the matter. He that robs me of my good name takes trash. 
What is it but a little foul breath tainted from every sot's lungs .' But he who 
takes my purse robs me of that which enriches him, instead of me, and therefore 
I will have vengeance. 

Now, Mr. Speaker, I do not wish to be misunderstood ; I do not 
wish to be misrepresented in this matter. Let no man assert that I 
refer to the evils of those days as either excuse or palliation for the 
evil of ours. That generation was a frugal and honest generation 
in the main, and they would have visited with the swiftest condem- 
nation and punishment, as this generation will visit with the swift- 
est condemnation and punishment, every breach of public trust, 
whether through dishonesty or usurpation. But they did not send 
to England for Benedict Arnold. They did not restore the tories to 
power. They did not go down on their knees to George III and ask 



11 

him to take them back into favor. They believed that if the Consti- 
tution could not be administered honestly by a majority of the friends 
of the Constitution, it could not be administered honestly by a ma- 
jority of its enemies; that if liberty was not safe and pure in the 
hands of those who loved her, then liberty was a failure upon the 
earth, and they did not think of intrusting her to the hands of those 
who hated her. So in this generation had they lived to-day they 
would have done simply what a distinguished president of the con- 
vention in my own State, whom the gentleman quotes, recommeuded; 
they would have taken the Government from the hands of the lovers 
of liberty who are dishonest and put it into the hands of meu who 
entertain the same sentiments but who are honest. It would never 
have occurred to them that because among one hundred thousand 
men there are found some few who will not keep the eighth com- 
mandment, "Thou shalt not steal," which is a mandate for all the 
public service, they should put in power men who have no regard for 
the sixth, "Thou shalt not kill. 

The gentleman has very frankly stated what I admit is the one 
most vital issue in the coming campaign. It is an issue which tran- 
scends all questions of finance, of economy, of vigor of administra- 
tion, by as much as questions of freedom and human rights transcend 
all questions of mere property. It is an issue which the former slave- 
holding and rebel classes at the South deem so vital, that upon it they 
have impacted themselves together, as firmly united as they ever were 
in the interests of slavery, as thoroughly drilled and disciplined as were 
their best troops in the war. It is the question whether the policy 
which has been hitherto pursued toward the colored people of the 
South by the republican party shall be continued, whether the power 
of the nation shall be pledged to them for the protection of their 
rights, or whether they shall be left wholly to the mercy of the white 
democrats at the South when they have gained, as they hope to gain 
by such methods as they have pursued and are pursuing, the entire 
control of their State powers. This issue the democrats of the South 
deem so vital that they seem willing to risk all differences among 
themselves on other questions and to adopt any platform and sup- 
port any candidate by whose aid they can hope to carry one or two 
northern States with votes enough to give them a President. 

The American people had to choose between three policies in deal- 
ing with the four millions who had been emancipated by the war: 

First. To restore without condition the rebel States to their old 
powers, leaving the negro to be dealt with by the former masters 
without interference from national authority. 

Second. To keep the old States out of the Union, governing them 
as Territories until new generations, with new opinions and habits, 
had grown up to be intrusted with self-government. 

Third. The policy iu part adopted to confer by amendments to 
the Constitution of the United States citizenship and the right of 
suffrage on the enfranchised race, and impose upon Congress the 
power and duty of passing all needful laws for their protection. 

The second of these alternatives, the keeping the States that had 
rebelled in subjection as Territories, is a plan which to-day finds few 
defenders. Nearly a majority of the people at the North regarded it 
as unconstitutional. Whether constitutional or not, it was utterly 
repugnant to the principles, the habits, and the character of the whole 
people. Eleven vassal States kept in subjection by governors civil 
or military, and a complete system of government appointed from 
without. Whatever effect this would have had on the governed, 
there can be no doubt that it would have been in the end utterly de- 



12 

struetive to the governing States. There is no lesson taught more 
clearly by history than that the habit of wielding arbitrary power 
by one man over another or by one people over another tends to the 
injury of the men who wield it. 

The only alternative left, therefore, was between the policy advo- 
cated by the gentleman and that actually pursued by the people of 
the United States. 

Mr. Speaker, I propose to contrast the policy adopted by the Amer- 
ican people of dealing with the emancipated' race with that which 
the democratic party would have adopted as evidenced by its con- 
duct whenever it possessed either the legal or the physical power. I 
do not fear the comparison either of principles or of results. 

Before bringing these two policies to the test of actual experience, 
let ns consider what we ought to have expected beforehand from the 
known constitution of human nature. It is an old parliamentary 
adage, that " You should not put ont the child to a nurse who would 
strangle it." The writers of the civil law warn us against commit- 
ting a ward to a hostile guardian, tanquam agnum htpo ad devorandum. 

I would not of course apply this maxim literally to any lai'ge. class 
of my fellow-citizens. But to commit the rights of these men in 
freedom to men who thought their just and rightful condition was 
that of slaves, that the rights of these two million women should be 
left to those who thought it right to whip women, that the education 
of these children should depend on men who thought it right to sell 
little children, would hardly seem to be an act of political wisdom. 

But let us bring to the test of actual experience the theories of the 
gentleman from Mississippi. We are able fortunately to know some- 
thing of their fruits in legislation and something of their fruits in 
action. For a few T years after the war the democrats of the South 
by the policy of Andrew Johnson were permitted to have uncontrolled 
possession of the legislative powers of several of the Southern States. 
One of them was the State of Mississippi. I hold in my hand a small 
but most remarkable volume, the public laws of Mississippi for the 
year 1S65. 

The gentleman sought to find some palliation for these odious laws 
by citing the opinions of Governor Morton uttered in that year, that 
it was desirable to postpone for ten, fifteen, or twenty years the grant 
of the full elective franchise to the colored race. He would have it 
believed that Governor Andrew of Massachusetts held a like opinion. 
He is wholly mistaken as to Governor Andrew. Governor Andrew 
opposed the reconstruction of the .South on the basis of the colored 
vote alone, and proposed to admit master and slave to the enjoyment 
of the franchise on the same terms, imposing on both alike an edu- 
cational condition. He maintained that we must deal generously and 
with confidence with the men who had carried their States into rebell- 
ion, whom he termed "the natural leaders of that society." But the 
conduct of the Legislatures of Mississippi and the other States over- 
turned all the theories of Governor MORTON, and struck a cruel blow 
in return for the confidence of Governor Andrew. 

The opening sentence of the constitution of Mississippi declares — 
That all freemen when they form a social compact are equal in rights. 

I think it will be perceived that in the opinion of that Legislature 
the negro was not present when the social compact was made. They 
then proceed to provide, in article 8 of the constitution, that — 

Section l. The institution <>f slavery bavin- been destroyed in the State of Mis- 
sissippi, neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punish- 
ment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall hereafter 
exist in this Slate: and the Legislature at its next session, and thereafter as the 



13 

public welfare may require, shall provide by law for the protection and security of 
the person and property of the freedmeu of the State, and guard them and the State 
against any evits that may ari.se/rom their .sudden emancipatU n. 

Under that authority "to guard them — the freedmeu — and the State 
agaiust any evils that may arise from their sudden emancipation," he 
good enough, Mr. Speaker and gentlemen, to listen to what they did. 
In the first place, on pages 82-86 of this volume is "An act to 
confer civil rights on freedmen, and for other purposes." In the first 
place, they enacted that no negro should own any real estate ; he 
might own personal property ; hut no person should lease any real 
estate to a negro. He could not own in fee, nor have auy interest as 
tenant, in any real estate. Audtheu they go ou and provide — 

That every freedman, free negro, and mulatto shall, on the second Monday of 
January. 1866, and annually thereafter, have a lawful home or employment, and 
shall have written evidence thereof. 

The same act then goes on to provide " that every civil officer shall, 
and every person may"— just listen to this, you who represent con- 
stituencies of northern laborers — 

That every civil person shall, and every person may. arrest and carry back to his 
or her legal employer any freedman, free negro, or mulatto who shall have quit the 
service of his or her employer before the expiration of his or her service without 
good cause, and said officer and person shall be entitled to receive for arresting 
and carrying back every deserting employe aforesaid the sum of 65, and ten cents 
per mile from the place of arrest to the place of delivery : aud the same shall be 
paid by the employer and held as a set-oft' against the wages of said deserting em- 
ploy e. * 

Then, upon affidavit made by the employer hefore auy justice of 
the peace that his servant has left him a\ ithout good cause, the negro 
is to be seized, brought before the justice of the peace, ami trial is to 
be had: and from the judgment of the justice either party may ap- 
peal to the county court, and the justice may commit the negro to the 
custody of the employer in the mean time until that appeal is settled. 

Section 9 of the same act provides — 

That if any person shall persuade or attempt to persuade, entice or cause any 
freedmen. free negro, or mulatto to desert from the legal employment of any person 
before the expiration of his or her term of employment, or shall knowingly em- 
ploy any such deserting freedmen, free negro, or mulatto, or shall knowingly give 
or sell to any such freedman, free negro, or mulatto any food, raiment, or other 
thins, be or she shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and, upon conviction, shall be 
fined not less than $25 aud not more than $200 and costs: and if said fine and costs 
shall not In* immediately paid. The court shall senteuce such convict to not exceed- 
ing two mouths' imprisonment in the county jail, and he or she shall morever be 
liable to the party injured in damages. 

And here is a further act to amend the vagrant laws of the State. 
The act. in its second section, provides — 

That all freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes in this State over the age of eight- 
een years, found on the second Monday in January. 1866, or thereafter, with no 
lawful employment or business — 

If he is out of work even ; that is all that is required — 

or found unlawfully assembling themselves together either in the day or night- 
time — 

And by a later statute it is expressly enacted that all the old laws 
relating to slavery shall be applicahle to freedmen ; so that the hold- 
ing of a political meeting or any other meeting is an unlawful act 
under this law — 

and all white persons so assembling with freedmen. or usually associating with 
freedmen. free negroes, or mulattoes on terms of equality. * * '* shall be deemed 
vagrants, and. on conviction thereof, shall be fined in the sum of not exceeding, in 
the case of a freedman, free negro, or mulatto. $50, and a white man, $200, and'im- 
prisoned at the discretion of the court, the free negro not exceeding ten days, and 
the white man not exceeding six months. 



14 

So that, under the authority to pass laws to guard the freedinen 
against any evils that may arise from their sudden emancipation, the 
white men of Mississippi enact that any white man who associates with 
a free black citizen on terms of equality is to he deemed a vagrant, 
and punished by fine and imprisonment; and I am not so sore that, 
so far as the authors of that law were concerned, it was not a wise 
law, so far as the morals, honesty, and fitness for citizenship of the 
negro were concerned, to exclude, them from his society. 

Then there is another act providing — 

That no freedman, free negro, or mulatto, not in the military service of the United 
States Government, and not licensed so to do by the board of police of his or her 
county, shall keep or carry fire-arms. 

And the penalty is $10 and costs ; and any white person who shall 
sell, lend, or give to any freedman, free negro, or mulatto any.fire- 
arms is to be subject to fine and imprisonment. 

Now, by the uniform confession of the white democrats of the 
South, their homes during the war were guarded by these same freed- 
men, then slaves, and they were guilty of no disturbance, no act of 
violence, no outrage. They therefore could not have supposed that 
they were in any danger by permitting these freedmen to have arms. 
But it was that the negro should not be recognized as enjoying that 
first constitutional prerogative of the free citizens of this Republic, 
the right to bear arms, that this law was enacted. Then there is this 
further provision in the same law : 

That all the penal and criminal laws now in force in this State defining offenses 
and prescribing the mode of punishment for crimes and misdemeanors committed 
by slaves, free negroes, and mulattoes, be, and the same are hereby, re-enacted and 
declared to be in full force and effect against freedmen, free negroes, and mulattoes, 
except so far as the mode and mannerof trial and punishment have, been changed 
or altered by law. 

And the act further provides — 

That if any freedman, free negro, or mulatto, convicted of any of the misdemean 
ors provided against in this act — 

Including the crime of being out of work — 
shall fail or refuse, for the space of five days after conviction, to pay the fine and 
costs imposed, such person shall be hired out by the sheriff or other officer, at public 
outcry, to any white person who will pay the said fine and costs and take such 
convict for the shortest time. 

And there is no limit as to the time. 

[Here the hammer fell.] 

The SPEAKER pro tempore, (Mr. Hereford in the chair.) The 
time of the gentleman has expired. 

Mr. GARFIELD. I hope the time of the gentleman will be ex- 
tended. 

Mr. BLAND. I move that the time of the gentleman be extended. 
How much additional time does he want ? 

Mr. HOAR. I cannot tell exactly. I will get through as soon as 
I possibly can. 

There was no objection, and an extension of time was accordingly 
granted. 

Mr. HOAR. Now remember that all these laws were passed in 
Mississippi before there was conferred on these freedmen any politi- 
cal powers. They were not the result of bad government. They 
embodied the ideas which the southern democrats then entertained 
of what was just and right in carrying out in good faith the amend- 
mentof the Constitution prohibiting slavery. This was the action of 
these men toward a class of their fellow-citizens whom their own 
constitution declared to be free. 

I should like to take the sense of the workingmen of any northern 



15 

State this summer as to what they think of the fitness for rule in 
the Republic of a party that proposes to sell free citizens for the crime 
of being out of work. 

These laws in substance were copied in the State of Louisiana. I 
have the Louisiana laws here, but will not read them. They were 
substantially copied in Texas, and I think in Georgia and several 
other southern States. 

In the same year Mississippi rejected the thirteenth amendment ; 
so that they desired to preserve slavery in Kentucky, Maryland, Del- 
aware, and Missouri. 

Truly— 

Thy gentleness hath made thee great. 

I now wish to call attention to one other matter. I will ask the 
Clerk to read an extract from a report made by Hon. Luke P. Poland, 
who my friends on the other side will concede to be one of the most 
candid, impartial, and just men we have ever had in public life. 
The report relates to a time before any carpet-bag governments were 
etablished in the South. I ask the Clerk to read the paragraphs I have 
marked. 

This is the account of a transaction in the State of Louisiana in 
1864. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

In 1664 a convention was held which framed the constitution of the State. It 
adjourned subject to the call of its president. In 1866 it was summoned to meet 
again in Jfew Orleans, to consider some proposed amendments to the constitution, 
which had gone into effect. It was claimed that by the adoption of the constitution 
its functions were exhausted, and that its future assembling could have no official 
character. If this were true it would seem to have been harmless. 

Its members were unarmed and unprepared for resistance. This body was set 
upon in the hall where it assembled by a mob consisting of citizens and policemen 
of New Orleans. In the language of the report of the congressional committee of 
the House of 1866, who fully investigated the whole transaction, " There has been 
no occasion in our national history when a riot has occurred so destitute of justifi- 
able cause, resulting in a massacre so inhuman and fiend-like. The massacre was 
begun and finished at midday. An intention to disperse and slaughter the mem- 
bers of the convention and those persons, white and black, who were present and 
friendly to its purposes, was mercilessly carried into full effect." The police were 
active on the side of the rioters. Two hundred and sixty persons were killed. 
The report proceeds : 

" The committee examined seventy-four persons as to the facts of violence and 
bloodshed upon that day. It is in evidence that men who were in flu- hall, terri- 
fied by the merciless attacks of the armed police, sought safety by jumping from 
the windows, a distance of twenty feet, to the ground, and as' they jumped were 
shot by police or citizens. Some,' disfigured by wounds, fought their way down 
stairs to the street, to be shot or beaten to death on the pavement. Colored persons 
at distant points in the city, peaceably pursuing their lawful business, were at- 
tacked by the police, shot and cruelly beaten. Men of character and position, some 
of whom were members and some spectators of the convention, escaped from the 
hall covered with wounds and blood, anil were preserved almost by miracle from 
death. Scores of colored citizens bear frightful scars, more numerous than many 
soldiers of a dozen well-fought fields can show, proofs of fearful danger and 
strange escape. Men were shot while waving handkerchiefs in token of surrender 
and submission. White men and black, with arms uplifted praying for life, were 
answered by shot and blow from knife and club ; The bodies of some were ' pounded 
to a jelly: ' a colored man was dragged from under a street-crossing and killed at 
a blow : men concealed in outhouses and among pilesof lumber were eagerly sought 
for and slaughtered or maimed without remorse : the dead bodies upon the street 
were violated by shot, kick, and stab ; the face of a man 'just breathing his last' 
was gashed by a knife or razor in the hands of a woman ; an old gray-haired man 
peaceably walking the street at a distance from the institute was shot through the 
head; negroes were taken out of their houses and shot: a policeman riding in a 
buggy deliberately fired his revolver from the carriage into a crowd of colored men ; 
a colored man two miles away from the convention hall was taken from his shop 
by the police, at about four o'clock on the afternoon of the riot, and shut and wounded 
in side, hip, and back. One man was wounded by fourteen blows, shots, and stabs ; 
the body of another received seven pistol-balls. After the slaughter had measur- 
ably ceased carts, wagons, and drays, driven through the streets, gathered the dead, 



16 

the dying, and the wounded in 'promiscuous loads,' a policeman, in some cases, 
riding in the wagon, seated upon the living men beneath him. The wounded men, 
taken at first to the station-house or lock-up, were all afterward carried to the hos- 
pital. While at the station-houses, until friends found them with medical aid, they 
were left to sutler ; -when at the hospital they were attended to with care and skill. 
But this was done at no cost to the city or to the State. 

" Without asking permission, so far as the committee learned, those wounded men 
were carried to the hospital under the care of the Freedmen's Bureau and shelter, 
surgical treatment, and food were furnished at the cost of the United States.' 

"In the year 1868 occurred in Louisiana six hloody and terrible massacres. Mr. 
Poland reports that more than two thousand persons were killed in that State within 
a few weeks of the presidential election. In the parish of Saint Landry the repub- 
licans had a registered majority of 1,071 votes. In the spring of 1868 they carried 
the parish by 678 votes. In the fall they gave Grant no vote, not one, while the 
democrats cast 4,787 for Seymour. Here occurred one of the bloodiest riots on rec- 
ord. The Ku-Klux killed and wounded over two hundred republicans, hunting and 
chasing them for two days and nights through fields and swamps. Thirteen cap- 
tives were taken from the jail and shot. A pile of twenty-five dead bodies were 
found half buried in the woods. Having conquered the republicans, killed and 
driven off the white leaders, the Ku-Klux captured the negroes, marked them with 
badges of red flannel, enrolled them in clubs, led them to the polls, made them vote 
the democratic ticket, and then gave them certificates of the fact." 

Mr. Speaker, this was before all bad government of carpet-baggers 
or negroes. It was without other cause than the desire to carry an elec- 
tion and to give an illustration of the meaning of the gentleman's 
maxim — 

Thy gentleness hath made thee great. 

I will not detain the House by a recital of the terrible murder at 
Colfax in 1873, a deed which our report prououuces — 

Without palliation or justification; deliberate, barbarous, cold-blooded murder, 
to stand like the massacre of Glencoe or of St. Bartholomew, a foul blot on the page 
of history. 

Thy gentleness hath made thee great. 

In 1874 took place an election for State officers aud members of the 
Legislature. I ask to have the history of the transactions of that 
year read by the clerk, as given by myself in the report just cited. 

The Clerk read as follows : 

We now come to the events of 1874. The campaign was inaugurated by the for. 
niation of a party designed to divide the people of Louisiana on the line of race- 
Its convention at Baton Rouge begins its address, ""We, the. white, men of Louisi- 
ana.'' This party assumed various names in various localities, almost always indi- 
cating a purpose to make the race issue distinct. 

-Agreements were entered into in various parishes, signed by hundreds of planters, 
to employ no laborer who did not vote their ticket. Hand-bills like the following 
were circulated in French and English : 

" Louisianois : Pour sauver votre patrio, il faut renvoyer les negres. (Par la 
faim. animal le plus ferooe est dompte.") 

" Louisianians : To save your country, do not employ the negro. Wild beasts can 
only lie tamed by hunger.'' 

After the white-league rising of September 14, 1874, an account of which is given 
hereafter, risings took place in many parishes. The Kellogg officers were driven 
from power and compelled to fly for their lives. After the re-establishment of the 
Kellogg government in some cases the officers were not permitted to resume their 
functions. 

The speeches at public meetings and leading articles in the press urged the peo- 
ple to deeds of violence. We submit a collection of extracts taken from many lead- 
ing and influential journals published in various parts of the State. We have not 
space to make extracts from them in this report. They are enough of themselves 
to establish its conclusions as to the purposes and conduct of the leaders of the 
white man's party in the campaign of 1874. 

It is impossible to state, in tin- space which this report can properly cover, the 
details of the deeds of lawless violence which were proved before the committee. 
In many parishes the legal officers were driven out by force. Republicans were 
murdered or compelled to fly for their lives. Whatever the pretext, the real of- 
fense was their political opinions. 

Buford Blunt, State senator, an eminent and influential colored preacher in the 
Baptist Church, whose efforts to establish schools in the parish are highly spoken 



17 

of in the report of the State superintendent of education, was compelled to promise 
to give up all politics, and afterward to fly for his life. 

Allen Greene, a State senator, a native of Georgia, who had lived in the State for 
many years, had established in the parish of Lincoln a tannery and shoe manufac- 
tory. Hides and bark were produced in abundance in the 'neighborhood. Mr. 
Greene had furnished machinery which required the employment of skilled labor, 
and had introduced about eighty workmen from New England, to whom he paid 
an average of $30 per month, making a pay-roll of S2.500 per month to be expended 
in the town. In May, 1874, Mr. Greene was required to resign his office, with 
threats against his life. His workmen were so disturbed by the condition of things 
that they refused to remain, and a new body, who had been engaged in Massachu- 
setts, hearing of the rising of September 14, refused to keep their engagements. 
Thus the people of the parish of Lincoln prefer to send their hides half way across 
the continent, have them tanned and manufactured into boots and shoes in Massa- 
chusetts, by workmen to whom the flour, sugar, rice, and cotton are in like manner 
conveyed, and then brought back to Louisiana in the form of boots and shoes, and 
to pay tribute to the manufacturer iu Massachusetts, to the carrier and commission- 
merchant, rather than to allow manufactures to be carried on in their own State by 
men who niaj- be allowed the free expression of their political opinions. 

THE STORY OF JUDGE MYERS. 

H. C. Myers resides in the parish of Natchitoches, about five hundred miles 
above the city of New Orleans, on Bed River : has lived there eighteen years. His 
wife and their six children were born there. For several years he was' register of 
the United States land office for the northwestern district of Louisiana ; was elected 
parish judge in 1870 and 1872, which position he held until February, 1874, when 
he was appointed judge of the seventeenth judicial district of that State, compris- 
ing the parishes of Natchitoches, Sabine, De Soto, and Red River. He appears to 
be a man of good education, of culture, of refined speech and manners ; and your 
committee fail to see that any charge of mal or misfeasance in office was at alf sus- 
tained. Early in the spring of 1874 there were nursed and assiduously cultivated 
in that parish fierce and clamorous political antagonisms. The "White League was 
organized, the removal of all republican office-holders determined npon, and, as 
has been well said of another locality, "the air was full of assassination.'' In May 
notices were posted in conspicuous places, as follows : 

"k. k. k." 

"Boullet, Myers, and all other radicals in this parish. Tour fate is sealed. 
Nothing but your blood will appease us. The people of Natchitoches, Sabine, 
Winn, De Soto, Rapides, Red River, Bienville, Claiborne, Jackson, and Caddo are 
ready at a moment's notice, and will exterminate all radicals." 

About this time Judge Myers was warned that his life would be forfeited if he 
remained another day at his home. His wife, two of his children, and his aged father 
were sick ; one of the children and the father hopelesslv ; so says the judge. " Quite 
sick; my little child dying; my aged father, at the other end of the town, also dy- 
ing. I kissed my little baby, placed it in the care of its weary mother and the Al- 
mighty. I left my home, not daring even to visit my father." 

The judge and Judge Boullet fled in the night-time by circuitous paths, without 
even a change of clothing, lest it might lead to suspicion^ and finally arrived at New 
Orleans. From that day to now he has never ventured t» his home, and dares not 
do so. In less than a week after he left the babe died, and the father, too, and 
says the wife in hertestimony, " I was left alone with my sick and dying children. 
None of my neighbors came to my assistance. My child died. I sent to the tomb- 
Imilder to make its little tomb, and he being a democrat refused to do it." From 
the testimony of the judge and his wife, and incidentially of others, your commit- 
tee are compelled to believe this a true story. 

"We were anxious to obtain the facts in the terrible tragedy of Coushatta, and 
were able to do so frem several witnesses, but principally from Mi-. Twitchell, a 
brother of one of the victims, and from Mr. Abney, a merchant of that town, 
whose reluctant admissions, under a rigid cross-examination, satisfied us was the 
chief conspirator. This is the fearful story proven to our satisfaction : 

The Twitchell brothers, from New Hampshire, both young and active men of 
l)usiness, one a man some time married, the other but a short time before his death, 
with five or six other nienfrom the North, with their families, settled in this little 
town, bringing with them earnestness of purpose, integrity, economy, and habits 
of industry. The reasonably-expected results followed : The hamlet grew into a 
prosperous and flourishing New England village, with its saw and grist mills, its 
factory, its stores and store-houses, its pleasant white-painted houses with their 
lawns and gardens, its churches and school-houses. Business flourished. About 
twelve hundred colored men were gathered into the village. Their labor was in 
demand; their wages good and promptly paid. Their children eagerly availed 
themselves of the school privileges abundantly afforded. The colored voters find- 
ing that, these men never betrayed their confidence, but in all things were aiding 
2 HO 






IS 

them, elected them to the several parish offices; and they, thus elected, from a 
sense of duty, honestly and faithfully administered the same. Everything in the 
village was prosperous, peaceable, and happy. But there was there a small party 
of white conservatives, headed by Mr. Abney, who determined to rule, who ac- 
knowledged no right to the black man but that of service, who had no feeling to- 
ward their white neighbors recognizing in the black a citizen other than intense 
jealousy and hatred. 

The usual result followed. August 25, 1674, these officers were waited upon and 
ordered to resign ; they declined ; then they were informed that death alone was 
the alternative. Knowing that the inexorable decree had gone forth, that nothing, 
neither service to the town, to the State, to their neighbors, nor the faithful per- 
formance of duty, nor virtue, nor integrity, nor prayers of themselves, of wives, or 
little children could save, they besought their cruel neighbors to send them in 
safety out of the State, promising never to return. An escort was raised by this 
man Abney of twenty mounted'men. The prisoners, taking all of their ready 
money, about $2,000, placed themselves in the hands of the guards. Abney issued 
military orders to what he called political clubs, but we believe white-leaguers, 
along the route to furnish aid. supplies, &c. The march was commenced, and, 
within thirty milts of their homes, these prisoners were all murdered, terribly mu- 
tilated, buried, and no father, widow, brother, or son was permitted even to visit 
their graves until the bodies were decomposed. None of the white man's party 
have ever sought the murderers ; no pursuit has ever been made, no inquiries ever 
set on foot by them. A man riding one of the horses of one of the dead men has 
been seen in the parish, but no one arrested his course or asked him about the 
bloody deed. No republican, white or black, has dared to commence proceedings. 
Abney was arrested and admitted to bail in a small sum, and with impunity insults 
the majesty of outraged law by boldly appearing as a witness before this commit- 
tee. More, he was introduced by the conservatives to the witness-stand with a 
flourish of trumpets as a leading 'merchant of that section of the State. A brief 
extract from his cross-examination will indicate his connection with the crime: 

"Mr. Frye. Was there not one other officer at that time requested to resign ? 

"Mr. Abnet. Yes. 

"Mr. Frye. "What was his name ? 

"Mr. Abney. Scott. 

"Mr. Frye. Was he killed 1 

"Mr. Abney. No. 

" Mr. Frye. Did he go with your guard i 

" Mr. Abney. No. 

"Mr. Frye. Why not? 

"Mr. Abney. I wouldn't let him; I compelled him to remain behind. 

" Mr. Frye. Was he a master-mason 1 

"Mr. Abney. Yes. 

" Mr. Frye. Were you a master-mason ? 

" Mr. Abney. Yes. 

"Mr. Frye. Were any others of the persons masons ? 

"Mr. Abney. I did not know that they were." 

Now, against those murdered men no crime was charged, no dishonesty alleged, 
no malfeasance in office proved. Abney alone said they had cheated in certain con- 
tracts, but your committee gave no credit whatever to his testimony. 

Thus by the murderous hands of neighbors, of men who pride themselves upon 
their position in society, of those who had never received from the victims other 
than kindness, were these men deliberately slain. And there is practically no law 
in Louisiana to bring them to punishment. 

white league. 
The White League is an organization which exists in New Orleans, and contains 
at least from twenty-five hundred to three thousand members, armed, drilled, and 
officered as a military organization. Organizations bearing the same name extend 
throughout many parts of the State, ft was pretended that this organization in 
the city was simply as a volunteer police force, the regular police being inefficient; 
that it has no connection with associations of the same name in other parts of the 
State, and that these latter are large political clubs without military organization 
or arms. A brief examination and a brief cross-examination effectually dispelled 
this pretension. Several of its members and officers were examined before the 
committee. So far as was shown, this organization in no single instance performed 
police functions. Its organization, equipment, drill, and discipline were wholly 
military. Its name was not appropriate to a volunteer pol ice, but was appropriate to 
an association designed to put the whites of the State into power by force. It had 
cannon. On the 14th of September, 1874, it rose upon and attacked the police of 
the city, the pretext of the attack being the seizure of arms which it had imported 
from the North, and. having defeated them with considerable slaughter, it took 
possession of the State-house, overthrew the State government, and installed a new 



19 

governor in office, and kept him in power until the United States interfered. This 
rising was planned beforehand. Its commanding officer, Ogden, published an 
elaborate and pompous report of his military movements, in which he expresses 
his thanks to his aids and other officers for their important and valuable services 
before and during the day of the action. In other parts of the State organizations 
under the same name existed, and we have no doubt that their purposes and meth- 
ods were also identical. In one parish their meetings were called by notices, 
headed, "Attention, White League," and signed by an officer in his military ca- 
pacity. Abney, the leader of the band at Coushatta, when he sent oft' the repub- 
lican prisoners' under a guard, gave a military order for supplies and guard to the 
highest officer of a club in another town, on obedience to which, if bis story were 
true, the safety of the lives of the prisoners depended. Yet he professe.l to have 
no other power than that of president of an ordinary democratic club addressing 
the president of a subordinate or branch club of the same organization. 

The White League of New Orleans itself was and is a constant menace to the re- 
publicans of the whole State. Its commander can, in a few hours, place bodies of 
men, armed and drilled, in any of the near parishes, or those on the coast, or into 
Mississippi, Alabama, or Texas. It doubtless contains many persons of property 
and influence. It also contains many persons of very different character. It would 
be desirous and able to overthrow the State government at any time, if not pre- 
vented by the power of the United States. They still retain more than one thou- 
sand stand of arms, taken from the State on September 14 and never returned. 

We cannot doubt that the effect of all these things was to prevent a full, free, 
and fair election and to intimidate the colored voters and the white republicans. 
The very formation of a white man's party was a menace of terrible import to those 
who remembered Colfax and Bossier and the convention. The press was filled 
with threats of violence. The agreement to discharge laborers, the suggestion that 
wild beasts are tamed by hunger, was evidence of the same spirit. The overthrow 
of the State government by the White League on the 14th of September ; the turn- 
ing out large numbers of parish officials in the country, compelling them to flee for 
their lives ; the fearful lesson of Coushatta ; the formation, arming, and drilling of 
the White League, the natural successors of the Knights of the white Camelia; 
these things in a community where there is no legal punishment for political mur- 
der must, in the nature of things, have filled with terror a people timid and gentle 
like the colored population of Louisiana, even if we had not taken abundant evi- 
dence as to special acts of violence and crime and their effects on particular neigh- 
borhoods. 

Mr. Moncure, the conservative candidate for State treasurer, claims a majority 
in the whole State of about five thousand. A far greater number of republicans 
than enough to overcome this majority must have been prevented from registra- 
tion or driven by terror from the polls. 

In view of these facts, we do not hesitate to find that the election of 1874 was 
neither full, free, nor fair ; that in large portions of the State the usual means of 
instructing and persuading the people, of organizing and conducting a campaign, 
could not be carried on by republicans without danger to their lives ; and that 
many more voters than were needed to give the republican party a complete 
victory were prevented from voting at all or coerced into voting the white man's 
ticket^ 

Mr. HOAR. Truly 

Thy gentleness hath made thee great. 

I am not to be frightened or ridiculed when I discuss these things 
by the taunt from any quarter that it is " shaking the bloody shirt." 
When the garment, however humble or mean, is drenched with the 
heart's blood of an American citizen I have but one question to put 
to my country, Anne hwc vestis filii tui f— Know you if this be your 
son's garment '! 

I agree with the gentleman that the union of nearly all the blacks 
in one political party, and of nearly all the whites in another, is a fact 
deeply to be deplored. Party spirit bears evil fruit in abundance 
when animosities of race and class do not mingle with it. But I can- 
not doubt that whether the white republican leaders have sought to 
foster this discussion on the color line or not, it would long since have 
disappeared if the leaders of the white people of Louisiana had not 
hammered and welded together the masses of the colored population 
by a system of conduct calculated to excite in the highest degree their 
fears for their freedom, or their political and social rights. 

The people who would persuade us, and to some degree persuade 



20 

themselves, that they are willing to give the negro all his rights 
under the Constitution seem to lose all their understanding of what 
justice and equality really mean when the negro is concerned. Tbey 
think, and very justly, that it is a great evil to mass all the colored 
votes on one side. It never occurs to them that it is an equal evil to 
mass all the white votes on the other. On the contrary, their ani- 
mosity is specially directed against those whites who act with negroes. 
They have little reprobation for those leaders who advise the whites 
to band together in an agreement not to employ negro laborers who 
vote the radical ticket, or for the planters who followed the advice. 
The life of no man would be safe, as one of their witnesses very 
frankly admitted, who, when it was time to gather the cotton-crop, 
should advise negroes to refuse to work for planters who are not re- 
publicans. The white who kills a negro goes unpunished. A fear- 
ful vengeance overtakes the negro who snaps a cap at a white man. 
In parish after parish the whites turn out public officers whom they 
dislike by force, and no punishment follows. The assembling of a 
body of negroes at the command of the sheriff to maintain his lawful 
authority is followed by the Colfax massacre. 

Southern gentlemen speak with contempt of persons whom they 
term "carpet-baggers." The Constitution gives to every American 
citizen the right to choose his home anywhere on American soil 
and to take suck part in public affairs as his fellow-citizens shall as- 
sign to him. Shall not the American citizen born on our soil have 
the rights to which we gladly welcome natives of other lands ? It is 
not to the carpet-bag, but that it is held in American hands, that the 
southern democrat objects. 

The gentleman will perhaps claim that the opinions of his class at 
the South have changed since these laws were passed, and since some 
of these outrages were committed. If they have not changed, surely 
no man will be bold enough to say that the rights of the colored peo- 
ple would be safe for an instant if they were placed within the power 
of that class. But admit that they have changed and that they are 
now reconciled in opinion to the abolition of slavery and to the equal- 
ity of all persons before the law and in the rights of citizenship. 
Ah, Mr. Speaker, that is a fatal admission. What tribute could be 
grander, what concession more complete, to the success of the repub- 
lican policy of reconstruction than to confess that it has resulted in a 
change of sentiment like that. 

Will the gentleman from Mississippi claim that he does not now 
think that it is a misfortune that the rebellion did not succeed, that 
it was a misfortune that the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth 
amendments were adopted, and that this belief is not shared by his 
political associates ? If this be his belief and theirs, they would be 
strange guardians of the rights of the race which these amendments 
emancipated. But if this be not his belief and theirs, I point to their 
conversion as the most triumphant evidence of the wisdom and the 
success of that policy which, while it has raised four millions from 
slavery to citizenship, has in ten years eradicated from the under- 
standings and the hearts of the white people of fifteen States the 
prejudices of centuries. 

Errors in administration, mistakes in finance, extravagances in 
expenditures, confidence unworthily bestowed — these have been the 
lot of all parties in the past, and will doubtless be repeated in 
the future. Even dishonesty and corruption have existed in all par- 
ties. They must, in the nature of the case, be practiced but by a few, 
and will be cured in a free government, whatever party may be in 
power, by the people whose resources and industries they burden 



21 

without distinction of party. But to have changed the opinions and 
conquered the prejudices of a people angered by defeat, hubittered 
by years of bloody war, so that they have become reconciled to the 
policy and convinced of the justice of raising their former slaves, men 
of another color and another race, to civil and political equality with 
themselves, this is a triumph of administration glorious and splendid, 
to which history can furnish no parallel ; compared with which the 
laurels that a Caesar reaps are weeds. 

Mr. Speaker, I do not deny that in all these years the democrats of 
the South have made some progress. But it has been a progress in 
which nothing has been due to themselves. Whatever they have 
learned, either of freedom, of justice, or of republican government, 
they have learned from their opponents. 

They have been the unwilling pupils of the republican party. Like 
Dante's souls, whose necks Satan had twisted, they have marched 
on impelled by a strength other than their own, perpetually looking 
back. 

So much, Mr. Speaker, for democratic legislation in the matter of 
reconstruction. It shows a concerted, crafty scheme to reduce the 
negro to a system of peonage which degraded him below the condi- 
tion of slavery, but imposed no corresponding obligation upon the 
master. This legislation, cruel and hateful as it is, is mercy itself 
compared with the conduct of southern democrats to the negro when 
freed from the restraints of the Federal power. I have given a few 
specimens, not because I desire to revive or preserve their odious or 
painful memory, but because they bear with terrible weight upon the 
issue now presented to the American people. 

The republican party, in my judgment, in prescribing the conditions 
upon which the States of the South should be re-admitted were guilty 
of one serious omission. Recognizing and affirming in their State 
constitutions, as the people of every northern State have done, that 
a system of universal education is absolutely essential to the success 
of a system of universal suffrage, they committed the folly, the fatu- 
ity, of imposing by national authority upon the South/with their 
four millions of freedmen just freed from slavery and a still larger 
number of ignorant whites, a system of universal suffrage, making 
no provision for education. But by the Bureau of Education and by 
religious and charitable organizations and private aid we have done 
much in that direction. 

All the teachings of the Old and New Testament are summed up by 
the Author of our religion in two simple and sublime commandments, 
on which hang all the law and the prophets. The great philosopher 
of our day, in one homely and noble verse, has expressed the whole of 
republican government in a space as brief : 

The noble craftsman we pi-omote, 
Disown the knave aucl fool ; 
Each honest man shall have his vote, 
Each child shall have his school. 

For what avail 

The plow and sail, 

Or land, or life, 

If freedom fail .' 

The gentleman makes eloquent but vague charges against the ex- 
isting administration for its conduct in relation to the Southern 
States. What one act of the Government gives him just cause of 
complaint ? Does he now dare to insist on his objection to either of 
the three great amendments to the Constitution ? He has ventured 
no such objection in this debate. Does he deny that Congress has 



power to enforce them ? If he admits the power the duty in proper 
cases follows. Does he place himself on record as complaining of the 
policy or purpose of the legislation of 1871, by which the homes of 
his colored fellow-citizeus throughout the South were protected from 
outrages such as moved the indignation of Reverdy Johnson ? He 
will scarcely make that issue to-day. Does he deny that it is the duty 
of the United States to guarantee to all the States a republican gov- 
ernment, and on constitutional demand to protect the lawful govern- 
ments of the States against lawless insurrection ? If he does he must 
repudiate the original Constitution as well as the amendments. The 
only reproach he utters against the Government is that the State 
governments for which it interfered were badly administered. But 
the United States is bound to support all lawful State governments 
against insurrection without considering their administration. The 
vital difference between the gentleman and the republican party is 
that he seems to think that the remedy for what he dislikes in gov- 
ernment is resistance by force. His logic would lead to the result 
That you are to vote against a State administration only when you 
like it, and revolt against it and attack its adherents with knife and 
pistol when you do not like it. 

The gentlemen quoted from a report of which I was the author a 
statement that the President had based his interference in Louisiana 
on the unlawful order of a judge. I think the assignment of that 
reason a grave error on the part of the President. I now admit, as 
I declared in the report, that the order of that judge was entitled 
to no respect whatsoever, and that the assignment of that reason 
tended naturally and inevitably to influence existing discontents and 
to make the democrats of Louisiana believe that no better reason 
existed. But the report also declared that in our judgment Kellogg 
was lawfully elected; that the difficulty in ascertaining the truth 
was caused by the frauds of his opponents and their destruction or 
carrying off the returns. It was in our judgment the constitutional 
duty of the President to recognize aud support Governor Kellogg. 
The whole of his error, which the gentleman from Mississippi dwells 
on as a justification or palliation for the acts of lawless violence, was 
the assignment of an unsound reason for the performance of his clear 
sworn duty. 

The two systems of dealing with the colored race are these: 

The republican party sets them free and secures their freedom by 
the Constitution itself. 

The democratic party would have left slavery to exist in Kentucky, 
Maryland, Missouri, and Delaware. 

The republican policy secures them equality before the law. 

The democrats sent white men to the penitentiary who associated 
with them on terms of equality. 

The republican policy pledged to them the whole power of the Na- 
tional Government to protect their homes from the Ku-Klnx Klan. 

The democrat left it to the judgment of the Ku-Klux Klan to de- 
termine when its outrages should cease. 

The republican policy made them freemen, citizens, voters; while 
the democratic would have left them peons. 

Mr. Speaker, there is another evidence of the wisdom of the Amer- 
ican people in conferring the rights of freemen upon the colored peo- 
ple to which I think neither the House nor the country will be in- 
sensible. During the past seven years there have sat in this Hall an 
average of seven colored Representatives. Most of them had been 
slaves, deprived by the laws under which they were born of the 
right to learn to read, to attend public meetings, or to avail them- 



23 

selves of any of the common methods of obtaining information con- 
cerning public affairs. All of them came from humble places m life 
Yet what equal number of members of this House can be chosen on 
any principle of selection that will stand higher, either for fidelity, 
wisdom, or propriety in the discharge of their high duties. Who can 
cite an instance of an improper utterance in speech or of an undignified 
or unbecoming act of a colored Representative ? What colored man 
has been compelled to suppress from the official reports any angry or 
intemperate utterances whicli have come from his heart in the heat 
of debate ? Have the memories of ages of cruel oppression endured 
bv their race— have the terrible cruelties of recent days wrung from 
their lips a' single expression of hatred, or led them to urge on then- 
political friends, who held the Government by such large majorities, 
a single measure of revenge 1 

They have had to meet the most unexpected emergencies and en- 
counter the most formidable antagonists. The gentleman from New 
York, perhaps the most trained and experienced debater in this 
House, has not forgotten how in the Congress before the last the 
gentleman from South Carolina with equal courtesy and dexterity 
left him unhorsed and on his back in the sight of the House and the 
whole country. When the able gentleman from Georgia, the late 
vice-president of the southern confederacy, made his most powerful 
and carefully prepared speech to the last House on southern affairs, 
he was replied to on the instant by another colored Representative. 
It is no disparagement to the gentleman from Georgia to say, that in 
dignity, in ability, in constitutional argument, the speech of Mr. 
Elliott was in no wise inferior to that to which it was a reply. I 
mean no disrespect to anybody when I declare that the policy which 
gave to the loyal slave his right to be represented or to be a Repre- 
sentative here' is as fully vindicated by its results as that which gave 
the rebel master the same rights. 

Mr. Speaker, I have said much that I have been constrained to 
utter in this debate with great reluctance and pain. The gentleman 
from Mississippi undertook to cite in his speech from a report of which 
I had the honor to be the author, extracting only such admissions as 
he could find in its pages against the conduct of mypolitical associates, 
while he was wholly silent in regard to the terrible arraignment made 
not by the report, but by the historic facts which it cites against the 
party to which he belongs. In my judgment, Mr. Speaker, the gentle- 
man from Mississippi made a fatal and grievous error. If he and a 
few of his associates, North and South, would give the same manly 
utterance of condemnation against men who seek to accomplish po- 
litical results by murder and assassination that has come from repub- 
lican lips against republican misgovernment, the whole evils which 
distract that fair portion of our country would be over in a month. I 
had the honor in that report to say, and I repeat it now : 

The public sentiment of the rest of the country, more potent than any legisla- 
tion might stop the whole trouble in a month. If instead of seeking to gam par- 
tisan advantage from evils which are ruining this fair State, the two parties ot .the 
North would each resolutely set its face against the evil done by its own side, little 
would remain for Congress' or President. The difficulty of the southern problem 
would have disappeared long ago if the democratic party of the North bad given it 
to be clearlv understood that they would have no political association with men 
who would commit, tolerate, extenuate, or overlook murder ; and the republican 
party of the North had been unanimous in making it understood with e<iual em- 
phases that they would have no affiliation with men who would plunder the public 
for personal gain. 

Mr. Speaker, I hate for any purpose to revive these odious and 
painful memories. Whatever oppressions have been suffered have 



'ursMRT Ut- 




CONGRESS 



04 009 086 445 2 



been suffered by my countrymen. Whatever crimes have been com- 
mitted have been committed by my countrymen. But we cannot 
discharge our own official duty, the American people cannot wisely 
exercise its high functions of self-government without a knowledge 
of the facts of our own history, however grievous and humiliating. I 
believe the wisdom of the people will find a peaceful and constitu- 
tional remedy for these evils whether of administration or lawless 
outrage. I do not agree with the gentleman from Mississippi that 
that remedy is to deliver the innocent into the power of the guilty, 
or that Congress should lay down its high functions to prevent crime 
at the demand of the criminals. 

Do the democrats of the South who are concealing, apologizing 
for, abetting these crimes reflect that they are educating their young 
men to become a generation of assassins ? Mr. Boutwell says in his 
report : 

The committee find that the young men of the State, especially those who reached 
manhood during the war or who have arrived at that condition since the war, con- 
stitute the nucleus and the main force of the dangerous element. 

Do the democracy of the North reflect that they are seeking to ob- 
tain power, not by a fair election, but by the aid of the votes of States 
in which their party is an armed conspiracy organized to overthrow 
freedom of election, and that their success is to substitute for the 
Constitution of the United States the principles and the practices of 
Mexico? 

The duty of the people is plain. Punish crime ; punish corruption ; 
nnmask hypocrisy. But trust liberty only in the hands of her friends, 
and let the Constitution of your country be administered and defended 
by those who love it. 



\ 



^^0,00^33 



0*009 086 4« 



2 • 



